Page 4 of Laced in Longing

MAVEN

Noodles burn the roof of my mouth as I slurp them down, steam rising in puffs that tickle the lines of my cheek. I don’t slow down. Pain is the price of efficiency, and I need the calories before facing the bitter night waiting for me.

I bought the cup from a vendor tucked in one of the underground’s many alcoves—an elderly woman who didn’t try to make conversation, just handed me the Styrofoam container with a nod that acknowledged our mutual disinterest in pleasantries. Real recognizes real, or whatever.

I sigh as my boots echo against scuffed floors, the labyrinth of passages from the train already so familiar to me. Despite only having lived here for a couple weeks, I’ve already memorized the fastest route from my office to my apartment. It’s something I habitually do with every place I move to; maybe striving for utter solitude isn’t a life worth living…and whoever said that would be right. None of this is worth living for. But every time I try to put an end to it, something goes wrong and I wake up in a hospital with another mark on my record. One more and I’ll be permanently imprisoned with white walls and unlabeled medications. No thanks.

A child scrunches their nose at me as I hack up a noodle I inhaled too quickly. I turn away and hasten my steps, willing a layer of fur to sprout before I exit the doors to the outside.

My phone vibrates just as I’m about to toss the now-empty noodle cup into a trash bin. The disruption feels intrusive. Who in their right mind would be calling me? No one calls me. Well, no one except the occasional scammer insisting I’ve fallen behind on student loans I never took out.

They’re always so fucking serious about it too. “This is your final warning before we contact the authorities, Miss Talmay.” Like I’m supposed to quake in fear at the thought of some imaginary debt collector siccing the cops on me.

I wonder if they take acting classes before they’re allowed to make these calls; if there’s some basement training facility where they practice sounding both threatening and official. It probably works on plenty of people—people like my eighty-year-old neighbor in Boston who was convinced I was Amy Winehouse risen from the dead. Or it might work on those who’d rather pay than deal with confrontation.

It might even work on me if I’d ever attended college long enough to accrue debt. But I barely finished high school, scraping by with the minimum requirements. Pretty sure they passed me just to be rid of me, sick of watching Crazy Mavey stare blankly through their lessons, never participating or caring.

The phone continues its persistent buzz as I approach a trash receptacle. With a sigh, I toss the container away and fish the blaring device from my pocket. The screen displays a name that makes my stomach knot: Dr. Voss.

Great. Just what I need to cap off my Friday⁠—

Except…today is Thursday. Our weekly call isn’t scheduled until tomorrow.

I hesitate, chewing open my inner cheek as my finger hovers over the screen. Part of me wants to let it go to voicemail, to pretend I was in the shower or somewhere with no service. But I know better.

Doctor Helena Voss is not a woman who accepts excuses. In the two years she’s been my therapist, she’s never once bought my bullshit—which is why she’s lasted longer than any of the others.

After my third failed suicide attempt four months ago—pills this time, instead of the blade that left the jagged, raised scars on my wrists—she had all the legal grounds she needed to have me committed. Instead, she proposed an arrangement: weekly torture sessions, without fail, or she would initiate institutionalization.

I agreed because the alternative was worse. Having spent time in a seventy-two hour hold once before, I know the constant noise, forced socialization, and patronizing staff are their own special kind of hell.

Now I’m tethered to Helena by a phone call each Friday afternoon. A leash just long enough to let me move cities but not enough to disappear completely.

I groan and answer on the fifth ring, a moment before the call would have ended.

“Hello?” My voice is flatter than fourth foster mother’s chest. Emily hated me for having bigger tits than she did, and I know that’s the reason she kicked me out. I couldn’t prove it, but it’s not hard to guess. Her husband stared at my chest far more than she or I liked.

“Maven.” Dr. Voss’ voice is crisp and professional. Never warm, never cold. Only clinical. “I’m glad I caught you.”

I resume walking, phone pressed to my ear. “We’re supposed to talk tomorrow.”

“That’s why I’m calling. I have an unexpected conference tomorrow and won’t be able to make our usual time. I wanted to get our session in today instead.”

Of course. Heaven forbid we skip a week. The world might end if Maven doesn’t describe her empty existence to a woman who gets paid to pretend it matters.

But there are two reasons I don’t immediately hang up. First, the conversation will distract me from the cold I’ll have to endure for the next several minutes. And second, I know what happens if I refuse.

The woman may be in a different country now, but she has connections everywhere and would have me committed within the hour. Couldn’t even make a run for it if I had the energy to.

“I’m on my way home,” I say, shoving open the heavy doors, wincing as icy wind slices my skin. “Can we make it quick?”

Papers shuffle on her end. “How’s Montréal treating you so far?”

“It’s fine,” I answer, intrigued by the thickness of my breath in the air.

“And the new job?”

“Boring. But it pays.” Does it pay enough to stay here? If I’m going to suffer through existing, the least I could have done was pick somewhere with a decent temperature. This weather should be illegal. My muscles tense as the cold seeps into each bone, and both shoulders hunch as if I could fold myself small enough to escape its reach.